Being born is like this:
The sunflowers slowly turn their corollas toward the sun.
The wheat is ripe.
The bread is eaten with sweetness.
My impulse connects to that of the roots of the trees.
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Notes:
And I also know a way of life that is soft pride, grace of movement, light and continuous frustration, that has a skill at aloofness that comes from a long and ancient path. Like a tiny sign of revolt an irony light and eccentric. There’s a side of life that’s like drinking coffee on a terrace in winter cold bundled up in wool.
I know a way of life that’s a light shadow unfurled to the wind and flapping lightly on the ground: a life that’s floating shadow, levitation and dreams in broad daylight: I live the richness of the earth.
— Clarice Lispector, tr. by Elizabeth Lowe, “The Stream of Life” (Água Viva)
Notes:
“On Sundays she got up early in order to have more time to do nothing.”
~ Clarice Lispector, from The Hour of the Star
Notes: Quote: via qui nasce una ruina. Art: Laura Lacambra Shubert with “Reading”
Notes:
It is daybreak here in Rio.
A lovely and cold dry morning.
How nice that all nights have radiant mornings.
It’s a quarter to six. I write while listening to music. Anything will do, I’m not difficult.
I am completely magical and my aura is bright blue.
Everything I touch, is born.
~ Clarice Lispector, from “Brasilia; Splendor” in The Complete Stories (edited)
Notes:
A very sweet light is spreading over the Earth like a perfume. The moon is slowly dissolving and a boy-sun languidly stretches his translucent arms…Cool murmurings of pure waters that surrender themselves to the hillsides. A pair of wings dances in the rosy atmosphere.
Silence, my friends.
The day is about to begin.
– Clarice Lispector, “Fever Dream” from The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
Notes:
How could you
not love
the ground on which you walk?
~ Clarice Lispector, “The Buffalo” from The Complete Stories
Photo: Early morning walkers pass in Bal Harbour, Fla. (wsj.com by Wilfredo Lee)
For I need to know precisely this one thing:
am I feeling what I am feeling,
or am I feeling what I wanted to feel?
or am I feeling what I would need to feel?
— Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Notes: Quote: The Vale of Soul Making. Photo: Scandebergs (via this isn’t happiness)
It was a table laid for men of good will. Who could be the actual expected guests who hadn’t come? But it really was for us. So that woman gave away her best to just anyone? And contentedly washed the feet of the first stranger. Embarrassed, we stared. The table had been spread with a solemn abundance. Piled on the white tablecloth were stalks of wheat. And red apples, enormous yellow carrots, plump tomatoes nearly bursting their skin, watery-green chayote, pineapples malignant in their savagery, calm and orangey oranges, gherkins spiky like porcupines, cucumbers wrapped taut round their watery flesh, hollow red peppers that stung our eyes— all entangled with strands and strands of corn silk, reddish as near a mouth. And all those grapes. They were the deepest shade of purple grape and could hardly wait for the moment they’d be crushed. And they didn’t care who crushed them. The tomatoes were plump to please no one: for the air, for the plump air. […]
We kept eating. Like a horde of living beings, we gradually covered the earth. Busy like people who plow for their existence, and plant, and harvest, and kill, and live, and die, and eat.
~ Clarice Lispector, “The Sharing of Loaves.” The Complete Stories (New Directions. 2015)
Notes:
The great waiting played a part. Inside the vastness, plotting. All that, yes. Prolonged, weary, the exasperation. But at dawn the next day, like a slow ostrich straightening itself out, she was waking up. She awoke to the same intact mystery, opening her eyes she was the princess of the intact mystery. As if the factory whistle had already blown, she dressed in a hurry, downed her coffee in one gulp. Opened the front door.
~ Clarice Lispector, “Preciousness.” The Complete Stories
Credits: Image – Thank you Doug at eclecticitylight
Like when you squeeze lemon into black tea
and the black tea starts brightening all over.
Her fatigue was gradually brightening.
Without any fatigue whatsoever, incidentally.
The way a firefly lights up.
Since she was no longer tired,
she’d get up and get dressed.
It was time to start.
~ Clarice Lispector, “The Imitation of the Rose.” The Complete Stories
Photo: Fireflies by m hamajima via Mostly Japan
Have a seat. Stretch out your legs. Close your eyes and ears. I shall say nothing for five minutes so you can think about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. See, and this will be more perfect still, if you manage not to think in words, but rather create a state of feeling. See if you can halt the whole whirlwind and clear a space for the Fifth Symphony. It is so beautiful. Only thus will you have it, through silence. Understand! If I perform it for you, it will fade away, note by note. As soon as the first one is sounded, it will no longer exist. And after the second, the harmony will no longer echo. And the beginning will be the prelude to the end, as in all things. If I perform it you will hear music and that alone. Whereas there is a way to keep it paused and eternal, each note like a statue inside you.
~ Clarice Lispector, “Letters to Hermengardo” from The Complete Stories.
Notes:
I’m walking across town on 47th street to catch Metro North. Times Square bursts to illuminate the light drizzle falling between the skyscrapers. It’s 48° F, cool, but comfortable for the first day of December. There’s plenty of time to catch the evening train. I’m a victim of a poor night’s sleep and a long day but I float above it all – above fatigue, above the snarled commuter traffic and I welcome the soft, evening rain. This day is done. This tank is empty. There’s nothing left to do but let it fall.
Fragments from my morning reading of Clarice Lispector’s book parachute in…now the rain has stopped. It’s just cold and feels good…The days melt into one another, merge to form one whole block, a big anchor. Her gaze starts evoking a deep well. Dark and silent water…
I take my seat. Rain drops bead on my shoes and mar the morning shine. Floating, watching it from above, the rain water slides down the side of my shoe. [Read more…]
Between two musical notes there exists another note, between two facts there exists another fact, between two grains of sand, no matter how close together they are, there exists an interval of space, there exists a sensing between sensing—-in the interstices of primordial matter there is the mysterious, fiery line that is the world’s breathing, and the world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.
~ Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Notes: Quote: The Distance Between Two Doors. Photo: Sweet Senderipity
Live & Learn 